Arizona State, Arizona shut out Huskies at home

Washington softball players may be wondering where all this talk of Arizona pitcher Taryne Mowatt’s “down” year is coming from. After what she did to the Huskies this weekend, they’ll be seeing her in their nightmares.

It was that bad for No. 23 Washington over the weekend, as Mowatt twirled a two-hit shutout Saturday before no-hitting the Dawgs yesterday to propel her No. 12 Arizona (33-16, 10-8 Pac-10) squad to back-to-back 3-0 victories — all after Arizona State pitcher Katie Burkhart and the No. 2 Sun Devils (53-4, 15-2 Pac-10) shut the Huskies out by the same score Friday.

“I think there’s a lot of things we can do better,” UW coach Heather Tarr said. “There are a lot of things within our control that we can manage a little bit better.”

Facing All-American pitching three days in a row didn’t help the Huskies at all. Burkhart, last season’s Pac-10 Pitcher of the Year, showed exactly why she’s a top candidate to bring home that hardware for a second straight season. The Sun Devil hurler struck out 12 batters and scattered eight hits in the complete game effort, quelling Husky rallies on more than one occasion.

Saturday, it was Mowatt’s turn. Mowatt, winner of two ESPY awards (one for female athlete of the year and one for college female athlete of the year), struck out 15 batters to go along with her two-hit performance.

Yesterday, she was even tougher. Mowatt was untouchable, walking just two while striking out 11 in the no-hit performance to turn the Dawgs away without scoring a run for the weekend.

UW’s pitching wasn’t bad, either, but anything short of perfect wouldn’t have been good enough. Caitlin Noble took the loss in her final game at Husky Softball Stadium, allowing three runs on nine hits in 4 2/3.

“I tried to attack them,” Noble said. “I was hitting my spots, and I got a little unlucky with some flares dropping in. Our team played pretty good defense, but it just wasn’t enough.”

In total, Mowatt had 14 innings pitched, two hits, 26 strikeouts. Not bad for a pitcher whose dominance has trailed off somewhat after terrorizing the Pac-10 last season.

“We had some quick innings, so we weren’t getting very much positive momentum,” Noble said. “That makes it tough.”

Tough, indeed.

“Hats off to Taryne,” Tarr said. “She found a way to make us swing at her pitch and not swing at our pitch. She was on even more [yesterday] than she was [Saturday].”

The Wildcats did all of their scoring yesterday in the fourth inning, using a home run from Sam Banister, an RBI single from Brittany Lastrapes,and a sacrifice fly by K’Lee Arredondo.

Washington (26-21-1, 5-12 Pac-10) has now lost four games in a row, as well as its last six home games.

The Huskies remain in sixth place in the Pac-10, with what one could classify as a couple of “must-win” games coming up against the Oregon schools.

“We have to continue to know what we can do as hitters,” Tarr said. “Offensively I just don’t think we did a good job of building on Saturday’s positives as much as we could have. Sometimes, a weekend like this, you can kind of spin yourself out of control. We’ve got four big games coming up next weekend. We’ve got to work to improve, that’s for sure.”